As others have pointed out though, there's no reason that other tools can't be used that way. I've certainly written TT2 and HTML::Template code that worked on fragments and assembled the results with perl code.

I don't want to slam Template::Recall and friends. I think minimalist templating (viva sprintf!) has its place and TT2 is overkill for many small jobs. I just want more descriptive terminology.

Of course. What I like about Template::Recall is that it enforces its style. It's most natural to use it in a clean way. Not everyone likes that approach, and that's fine. I'm a big fan of interfaces that are difficult to abuse (and I've seen my share of code-in-the-template abuses, as well as mini-language-turned-maxi abuses).